Clark Lea has no regrets about Vanderbilt transfer strategy — but Kentucky's Ray Davis could change that

Clark Lea said he wasn't surprised when Ray Davis went in the transfer portal — though largely because it's hard to be surprised by any player movement these days.

The Vanderbilt football coach had a meeting with Davis after the 2022 season in which they discussed the running back's options. Davis considered declaring for the NFL draft or using his final year of eligibility somewhere else, and eventually committed Kentucky, where he won the starting job.

There were no hard feelings in the transfer, Lea insisted. But if Davis, who has 236 yards on 33 rushing attempts through three games, goes off when Kentucky (3-0) visits Vanderbilt (2-2) on Saturday (11 a.m. CT, SEC Network), it may become a much tougher pill to swallow.

"Ray is a good player," Lea said Tuesday. "He was good when he was here. He's got good vision and good feet. He's got a knack for finding the space. He's got a knack for knowing when to cut back and get against the grain and break the long one. He's also a really good receiver in the past, we saw that when he was here, and I see that not only are they using him as a checkdown option, but they're also designing catches for the offense, which I think is really smart because he can do that."

Lea has built his program around high school recruiting, even sending out recruiting graphics emphasizing the lack of transfers out. He brought in only two scholarship transfers this offseason, plus a handful of preferred walk-ons. But Davis is an example of how that approach could come back to bite Lea and the Commodores.

SEC-to-SEC transfers from Vanderbilt

Although Vanderbilt had the fewest players transfer out this offseason of any team in the conference, a high number of players ended up at teams on the Commodores' schedule.

In 2021, safety Dashaun Jerkins went to Ole Miss and offensive lineman Tyler Steen to Alabama. In 2022, in addition to Davis, defensive lineman Elijah McAllister went to Auburn and quarterback Mike Wright went to Mississippi State. Though he didn't transfer directly between the two schools, Gabe Jeudy-Lally, a defensive back on Vanderbilt's 2021 team, is now part of Tennessee's roster by way of BYU.

Lea said it doesn't bother him to see his former players leave for rivals, but Davis will provide the first real litmus test.

"Those decisions aren't always one-way," Lea said. "Those are really a lot of times, collaborative decisions about what the vision looks like, what the future looks like."

Lea declined to comment on the specific reasoning behind Davis' transfer.

Every SEC team loses significant players to the transfer portal, and many of those players end up remaining in the conference. The biggest area where Vanderbilt differs from its SEC counterparts, though, is how it replaces those players. The Commodores did not seek a transfer running back to replace Davis. They also lost cornerback Jadais Richard to Miami in the spring, and though they did make an attempt to fill that loss from the portal with Grand Valley State's Nyzier Fourqurean, he flipped to Wisconsin less than two weeks later.

Instead, Vanderbilt pivoted to Notre Dame linebacker Prince Kollie, who has not played this season because of injury.

"We stick with the players we have because that's what this program is defined by," Lea said. "That's an essential part of the developmental set this early on. . . . We want to build the foundation first, and that is heart."

Deion Sanders' approach wouldn't work at Vanderbilt

Deion Sanders has made waves for the way the first-year Colorado Buffaloes coach instantly improved a roster by dismissing a large number of players from the team and replacing them with transfers. That approach isn't likely to work at Vanderbilt for two reasons. First, Sanders already had proved to be an elite recruiter who could attract players with many other options. But perhaps more importantly, the Commodores have significant academic restrictions.

Players, whether incoming freshmen or transfers, won't get admitted if their grades aren't good enough — but that's just the tip of the iceberg. It is difficult to get credits to transfer into Vanderbilt if they were for anything more than general classes.

The most pressing issue, though, is that school regulations at Vanderbilt require transfer students to spend four full semesters and earn 60 credit hours there in order to graduate from the School of Engineering or the College of Arts and Sciences. Peabody College does not expressly require four semesters in residence, but it does require 60 credits, which is the equivalent of four semesters at 15 credits each.

These regulations make it difficult for the Commodores to get any transfer who has completed more than two years or begun studying in a major at their previous school. Any player in that group must be willing to lose a full year's worth (or more) of credits, and he may need to take summer classes to be academically eligible under NCAA rules that require a certain amount of progress toward a degree. Grad transfers avoid that hurdle, but those players must be admitted into a graduate program, vastly reducing the pool from which Vanderbilt can draw.

These restrictions affect every sport, not just football. But football is where the effects are seen the most, with portal usage exploding across the sport and across the country.

"That'll never be for us in a way that's, you're going to look up and see half the roster, in and out," Lea said. "I just don't think that that's sustainable here. So what we'll do is look to have a strategic approach there that allows us to support the roster that we built, we retain what we've developed, and keep the culture intact as we strengthen our team."

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.

Get the latest news and insight on SEC football by subscribing to the SEC Unfiltered newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Ray Davis to Kentucky could change Vanderbilt football transfer plans